Five Good Reasons to Support Andrew Yang

So if you’ve followed me for awhile, you know that I have a fairly casual interest in politics, and I enjoy discussing them from a number of angles. I have not, however, really concerned myself with presidential primaries, certainly not this early in the race. Is it even far enough along to call it a race? I mean 650 presidential candidates are already campaigning on the democratic side, so I guess the race has already begun… At any rate it feels way too early to be worried about this. and yet, here I am.

The reason I’m here is because several weeks back, I stumbled upon an excerpt of this interview with some random upstart who said he was running for president. You don’t need to watch the whole interview, but if you do… well, I’ll just say that I couldn’t put it down… I listened to several other interviews since, and I’ve got to say, the more I listen, the more I’m convinced that this guy is worth getting to know at the very least. In fact, I’m so convinced that he is, at the very least, a candidate worth your very serious considerations, here are five reasons to support Andrew Yang.

I can Fix Education! Here’s How!

Sometimes I think I should’ve gone into politics… I mean… I have a lot of good ideas… I have a lot more stupid ideas, but so do plenty of politicians (remember the sex with ducks guy?). I like to think my good ideas could outweigh my bad ideas. Of course I went into the wrong profession to be a politician (people only want lawyers or a super rich arrogant out of touch with the common man businessmen to govern them) but I think that if I somehow could get elected, I have a really good, really simple idea of how to fix education!

A Bizarre Thought: Taxes are Okay

Let’s get a few things out of the way before we get started:

1. Government overreach is bad
2. A government that grows too big, over taxes, or puts too much burden on the people rather than protecting their rights, is a problem

Now that we have those out of the way, let me get to the subject of this post. I think the title is absurd. It should be a given that taxes are okay. But more and more I see people who talk about how taxes are theft, or how the government shouldn’t be allowed to steal our money. I have a problem with that idea. And I feel I need to explain why. 

A Fortunate Victim of Circumstance

The other day on Facebook, One of my Facebook Acquaintances shared a graphic that I found rather odd: It’s sentiment that is common, but in my opinion, misguided. Nevertheless it’s a common idea in society today.

This idea is reflected in many other similar comments. Things we’ve probably heard, like “I’m here because I worked hard!” or “I pulled myself up by my bootstraps. If I can do it, so can anyone.” the general idea of all of these statements is: Work hard, make good decisions, and you can be successful! Make poor decisions and you will fail!

While I agree with those ideas at face value, I think these statements are dismissive of how much impact circumstance can have on success. With that in mind, I would like to just suggest a few ways that circumstances have led me to the point in my life that I’m at now.

The 2016 Election Challenge I Really Hope You’ll Take!

So this questionnaire crossed my news feed today. And what with the presidential elections being soooooo close, I thought I’d see which candidate seemed most appropriate for me. I was really surprised to see who my candidate was. the last person I thought I would agree with most would be old Bernie Sanders!

Yup! I know, that’s exactly what you thought!

Politics, Family, and Complete Confusion

I’ve done a great job of not posting political things in places where I might offend or upset friends or family (I have this wonderful blog to thank for that). Occasionally I might comment on someone else’s post, but I try to keep my opinions to myself (because when has a Facebook discussion about politics or social issues ever yielded a positive result).

Why It’s Getting Hard to Maintain Faith In People

I like most people I meet. I instantly trust most people I meet. And I genuinely assume the best of most people I meet. So on the rare occasion when people let me down, it’s pretty disappointing. But I’ve always thought people were worthy of my high expectations, and honestly, I think most of my friends and family have done better than my expectations, which is probably why I give people so much credit.

But lately, in the wake of a new scandal, people have really let me down. not just letting me down a bit, but letting me down a freakin’ lot. And I really find myself frustrated. So frustrated that I have to stray from my usual lighthearted posts and rant about it. 

Time to Stop Talking About Understanding and Compassion, and Actually Practice Some.

So I’ve been on the fence about whether I should write about the tragedy in California from a couple weeks back. I usually try and stay out of these conversations, but some interactions I had caused many opinionated people got me thinking way too much about it not to write something.

I couldn’t figure out what this post should be though. Should it be about gun control? no… Plenty of people write about that… Mental health issues… misogyny? Well… Plenty of interesting stuff has been written. But I think there is a deeper (and possibly a simpler issue that should be discussed.) We continue to have incidents like these through our country and everyone’s actions seem to repeat like a broken record. Every time we have a new shooting it’s like everyone pulls out their cue cards and repeats the same rehearsed dialogue they’ve had since the last shooting. And then we go through the same process again. Nothing ever changes. When the next tragedy happens, we’ll pull out our cue cards and repeat the same cycle of finger-pointing, accusing, mourning, and ultimately doing nothing to actually help anyone feel better or prevent further incidents from occurring. But maybe the way we can change is simpler than gun control itself. Maybe if we learned to show and feel genuine compassion for the people hurt and killed, and true compassion for everyone else, it might help us find a solution that would be more universal than just gun control, or just mental health, or anything like that.

This is kinda where I’m going with this. but I think there’s more to it than this.

Re-Re-Defining the Word “Indoctrination”

So I’m a member of a few “religious” groups on Facebook. I say “religious” with the quotes and all because they do like talking about religion, and some of the discussions are very interesting, but sometimes I have to wonder what I’m doing on the groups, because some of the members are so jaded towards anyone who chooses a religious lifestyle that it throws me off… wayyyyy off… like… I’m falling over off. And while I do enjoy the discussions that often arise, there are many times where I’m just like “I really don’t get you people.

I just needed a feature image for the post, guys. I’m not trying to say anything about public education…

One good example of this is when anyone says something to the effect of “I’m not going to be like the parents who indoctrinate their children to believe in such and such. That would be wrong.” Whenever something like that is said, it often comes off in very condescending fashion, as if to say “I’m a better parents than those religious lemmings, feeding their kids the party line.” And that drives me nuts. Which is why I want to talk about Indoctrination today.

But Really, What Do You Want Us to Do About All This Fat?

So my classical music loving friends started passing around this article from NPR about how Classical world can’t do anything but Fat shame women. now, there are plenty of actors of both genres that maybe could stand to lose a few pounds, but it is interesting to note, once again, how focused critics and writers are on the extra rolls of the women, while the men don’t get the same unfortunate criticism. Man we be sexist.

With that said, and while I agree that we need to be nicer and focus less on people’s appearance, especially women, I do have another thought that pops into my head: Yes. We should be nice. But still… shouldn’t we admit that weight is an issue? For men and women?